Rights of Women Workers in Global Manufacturing . A study of the Garment Industry in Bangladesh.

Rights of women workers in the globalized economy stimulate a great debate across the world. This is mainly for two opposing effects of women working: on one side, economic globalization offers a means of survival through an expansion of employment opportunities; on the other, globalization opens up price competition which in turn invokes producers to violate workers’ rights. Having no control over the export market, raw materials or equipment, producers finally put pressures on the labour force. A major strategy dealing with labour is to move towards a flexible workforce which consists mostly of women. Feminization and labour flexibility increasingly pushes women out of the core workforce consisting of part-time, temporary, casual and subcontracted, and into a marginalized group of workers that gives rise to the violation of workers’ rights. Simultaneously, the spread of cheap and rapid global communication and information systems increase the concerns of consumers, trade unions, buyers and the International Organisations (e.g.; IMF, ILO, World Bank) that extends resistance to sweatshops. As a result, a number of rules and regulations have been adopted both at the national and international levels to regulate workplace conditions. However, the violation of labour related issues is still widespread. Thus, employment of women in global manufacturing has triggered debate among scholars as to whether it brings more justice or more injustice. Considering the continued debate, this study seeks to explore how globalization shapes the dynamics of workers’ rights and gender relations in the workplace, taking the garment industry of Bangladesh as an empirical site. Applying Amartya Sen’s idea of social justice, this study demonstrates that labour rights in global manufacturing factories are not just but are at the same time essential for the survival of women workers. For ensuring just and fair labour practices, the role of industrial relations actors is essential. This study finds that the traditional industrial relations system and its core task of collective bargaining are not in place properly due to unequal power relations of the actors. Employers’ association holds the dominant power where workers associations remain at the bottom. Given the failure of traditional actors, the role of new global actors is crucial. Being pressurized by the consumers, citizens, NGOs and human rights activists, the role of multinational corporations is gradually increasing but has yet to reach expectations of the workers as they are driven by profit maximization. The consumers and citizens’ pressure on MNCs needs to be stronger to oblige them taking the responsibility of labour justice in their manufacturing plants. At the same time, NGOs and other transnational organizations need to work to increase labour power. This study suggests a cosmopolitan industrial relations system involving both traditional and non-traditional actors for ensuring labour justice in the global manufacturing industry.